Technical Field
The present invention relates to a technique for remotely operating an image forming apparatus and a technique related thereto.
Related Art
Remote operation technology includes a technique for remotely operating a remote operation apparatus by causing a remotely located apparatus to display a remote operation image used for remote operation of the remote operation apparatus.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2008-071313 (Patent Document 1) discloses a technique for remotely operating a remote operation apparatus by causing a remotely located PC to display on its display a remote operation image used for remote operation of the remote operation apparatus. In particular, with the technique of Patent Document 1, an image generated by combining a screen image (panel screen image) and a hardware key image that are disposed in horizontal line is displayed as a remote operation image on the display of the remotely located PC, the screen image being displayed on a touch panel of the remote operation apparatus and the hardware key image showing the external view of hardware keys of the remote operation apparatus. This allows a user to remotely operate not only the touch panel of the remote operation apparatus but also the hardware keys of the remote operation apparatus via the remote operation image.
Meanwhile, there is a technique for remotely operating an image forming apparatus, using a remotely located apparatus such as an external terminal. By applying the aforementioned technique of Patent Document 1 to this technique, an image generated by combining the panel screen image and hardware key image of the image forming apparatus that are disposed inline can be used as a remote operation image. Thus, even the technique for remotely operating an image forming apparatus makes it possible to remotely operate not only the touch panel of the image forming apparatus but also the hardware keys of the image forming apparatus.
It is however noted that the remote operation image is, as described above, an image generated by combining the panel screen image and hardware key image of the image forming apparatus that are disposed inline. From this, the data capacity of image data of the remote operation image is relatively large because it corresponds to the total value of the data capacity of image data of the panel screen image and the data capacity of image data of the hardware key image. The image data with such a relatively large data capacity can cause a delay during transmission from the image forming apparatus to the external terminal and accordingly a reduction in the operability of the image forming apparatus during remote operations.